


Safe

by sasha_b



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-04
Updated: 2012-12-04
Packaged: 2017-11-20 06:13:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/582166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sasha_b/pseuds/sasha_b
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hershel's farm.  The barn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Safe

**Author's Note:**

> For Comment Fic on LiveJournal.

Silence; the hitching of people breathing, crying, stumbling is all he can hear. Things are amplified, tiny sounds ripping through his ears, making them ache, bleed.

He holds Carol down as she sobs, Rick frozen, gun in his hand, finally lowering.

The girl's body is crumpled at Rick's feet, her blond hair dirty and matted and Daryl can't think, can't move for a moment.

_I think this one bloomed for your little girl._

Her name as he screamed it outside the old house tears around his mind, tornadoes of pain and hate destroying any chance he had of recovering from this with his sanity intact.

Things rush and move and the heat is oppressive and he lets Carol go, her sobbing a knife in his eye and he comes to his knees, looking first at Shane - fucking coward, all bravado, couldn't do it in the end - and then at Rick - Rick's hands are shaking as he tries to hold on to his gun, the gun that took Sophia's life from her, such as it was.

Daryl doesn't fault him, which is weird, really, but as he stands and lifts his gun - don't ever leave a weapon behind - he trips over his bootlace and almost falls, weakness in his limbs hated and unwarranted. He did fucking _everything_ he could for that little girl.

And still she died.

He approaches the body and stands at her head, waiting for someone else to do something, and as Andrea begins to move, blanket from nowhere in her hands, he unfreezes and crouches, the knees of his pants soaked in the girl's black blood.

He reaches out a hand, a millimeter from her dirty, flat hair, her eyes staring at nothing, holes gauged in her neck, scratches on her cheek, freckles showing through one clean spot on her face.

He wavers, fingers strong but shaking inside, and his gorge rises. He snaps his hand back to his weapon, and stands.

Turning from his group, he puts his back to them and strides out to the trees, walking a straight line, directionless, collapsed, unmotivated for once in this fucked up existence.

He licks his lips and stares at the wide, blue cloudless sky.

Well, she's safe now.


End file.
